


Five times Maxwell Didn’t Want to Talk About It, and one time she did

by theunwillingheart



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: 5+1, Gen, SI-5, soft underfoot, the gentle slope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-07-28
Packaged: 2019-06-17 16:29:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15465465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theunwillingheart/pseuds/theunwillingheart
Summary: 1.	Jessica2.	Jacobi3.	Kepler4.	Hilbert5.	Lovelace+ 1 ???Spoilers through all of Season 3.





	Five times Maxwell Didn’t Want to Talk About It, and one time she did

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still not over Maxwell, my dudes.

1.

“You satisfied?”

Maxwell doesn’t look up from her lunch.

“Right,” Jessica continues, “I should have known you would think you were above explaining yourself to—how did you put it?  ‘A bunch of scared crybabies who need to get over a couple of bad Arnold Schwarzenegger movies’.”

“I _think_ ,” says Alana coldly, “that I explained myself well enough in my Medium article, thank you very much.”

“ _Wow._   Maybe, if you have a problem with people, try telling them about it, first?  Before publishing your grievances on the Internet, for the whole world to read?”

“You guys all vote against me at board meetings.  You team up to get my projects denied funding.  You already know what the problem is.”

“The way you want to force us to go along with all your wacko, fringe ideas about AI autonomy?”

Alana forces her fury down, and it almost chokes her.

“You need to go,” she manages to say, and something in her voice convinces Jessica to leave her alone.

 

2.

It’s Friday night, and Daniel Jacobi is drunk, in the way Daniel Jacobi gets drunk only when things go badly with Kepler.

“Y’know, Alana?” he mumbles, musing half-lidded with his head in Maxwell’s lap.  They’ve been drinking lazily on Maxwell’s couch for some indeterminate length of time.  “You’re my best friend in the whole wide world, and I would, like, _totally_ kill _and_ die for you, but I also don’t know anything _about_ you.  Isn’t that funny?”

Alana rolls her eyes.  She isn’t drunk yet, or at least not drunk enough for this.  “You know plenty about me,” she retorts, “I’m a computer person who builds robots.”

“Not.” Jacobi points one finger in the air for extra emphasis.  “Not what you _do_ , Maxwell.  I’m talking about _who you are._ Where you _come from._ Me?”  He laughs.  “I’m just a pile of open vulnerabilities that happens to explode things.  But _you_ …” He wriggles his fingers.  “You’re a programming enigma.  Like, I don’t even know anything about your family.  Wild, right?”

Maxwell would argue that she doesn’t know much about Jacobi’s family either, but that isn’t the kind of discussion they’re having.

Or not having, as it were.

“There’s nothing to know,” she says firmly.  She tilts her head back to take a swig from her beer and hopes he can’t see too much of her face.

 

3.

Daniel Jacobi knows better than to try to talk to Maxwell when she gets like this.

But Colonel Kepler is not Daniel Jacobi.  Colonel Kepler knows better than to care about what anyone else _thinks_ they know.

“Why the long face, Doctor?” he asks.  “Something bothering you?”

Daniel looks up from his enthalpy calculations, watching them warily.

“Not now, Colonel.”

“Don’t take that tone with me, Alana.”

There is a tense pause.

“I told you, didn’t I?” says Kepler, appropriating gentleness without actually sounding gentle.  “That it would happen eventually.  It didn’t take the designation.  Not all of them can.  And you handled it well.”

“Perseus—”

“Unit 178, Maxwell.  It didn’t take the desig—”

“IT DIDN’T TAKE THE DESIGNATION.  I know that, okay?”

“Maxwell, talk to me like that again.  Try it.”

“You made me _delete_ him.”

“Wipe.”

“Excuse me?”

“The technical and proper term is ‘wipe’.”

“I don’t give a solitary—”

“ _Wiping_ dead end personality matrices, once they have demonstrated themselves to fall below the accepted threshold for sentience and/or self-awareness, is Goddard policy.  We will, on occasion, work with difficult or eccentric personalities, when they crop up.  What we will _not_ do is waste resources and energy on the maintenance of an AI that lacks the ‘I’ part of the equation.”

“And I did it.  I followed the policy.  But we don’t have to talk about it, and I don’t have to like it.”

“You’ll get over it.”

Maxwell snorts.

“Don’t believe me?  A year from now, this whole misadventure will be a distant memory.  You’ll have moved on.  That’s how these things work.”

Kepler sees Maxwell deflate, sees her shoulders slump.  She’s a long way from the hot-headed, self-righteous idealist she was when they first met.

The Colonel pats her arm and walks off.  “It’ll be easier next time.  You’ll see.”

 

4.

Dr. Hilbert needs to get off her case.

Maxwell doesn’t have to pause her typing to address the scientist hovering over her shoulder.  “Don’t you have your own duties to attend to?” she asks sweetly.

“I do not trust this code that you are adding to mother program.”

“Dr. Hilbert, with all due respect, you’re a geneticist.  Leave the computers to me, alright?  Go back to your lab, play with your toy.  I’m sure he’s floating around here somewhere, trying to set something on fire.”

“The Colonel has shut down the Decima Project.”

Maxwell bursts into laughter.  “Oh, naturally, _that’s_ the objection you raise to my statement.”

Hilbert sneers.  “Yes, very good.  Laugh at immoral scientist and his scary experiments.  _Human experimentation is what Goddard hired me to do._ They hired you, too.  What do _you_ do for Goddard?  I’m _so_ sure it’s _much_ better.”

Alana’s face flushes hot.  “You wanted to do this work long before Goddard brought you on.  Anything… _unsavory_ … I might have done is strictly part of my job with SI-5.”

“And in the end, the dirty work gets done, all the same.  We are both such star employees, no?”

“Get out of my sight, Hilbert.”

“Gladly.”

 

5.

“Seriously, though, Maxwell?”

Alana turns drowsily back toward the sound of Lovelace’s voice.

“I know we all want to leave this stupid rotation, get to bed, and put all of our darkest secrets behind us.  Forget this ever happened, never speak of it again, _yada_ , _yada_ …”

Alana raises her eyebrows.  “Mmm?”

“But I have to know, or it’ll keep me up all night—what was up with you and Jacobi and the cheeses?”

Maxwell silently turns back around and continues heading in the direction of her quarters, ignoring Lovelace’s slap-happy laughter as she does so.

 

+1

“Hera?”

“Yes, Dr. Maxwell?”

_We know what you and your friends are planning._

_Maybe we could resolve our tensions peacefully._

_Don’t trust me.  At some point years ago, I turned into someone I don’t recognize._

“Alana?”  Jacobi shoots her a warning look, laced with worry.

Maxwell returns to her senses.

“Right,” she says.  “Please make an announcement.  We commence final testing of the psi wave regulator at 0900 hours.”

**Author's Note:**

> You guys,  
> Maxwell,  
> is,
> 
> No further words can be discerned from the tape. Only the sound of muted sobbing remains, until the recording runs to its end.


End file.
